The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) announced today that in addition to their standard ratings for video games, they'll begin including summaries of the games, highlighting the parts which earned the rating. As Giant Bomb points out, some are quite entertaining to read. The new policy drew praise from Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), both of whom have spoken out against "inappropriate" game content in the past. The summaries are viewable at the ESRB's website; thus far, they've only done them for games rated since July 1st.

arcticstoat writes "Supreme Commander 2 has now been officially announced, but with a surprise publishing partner on board — Square Enix. Gas Powered Games' original RTS game and its expansion pack, Forged Alliance, were published by THQ, who is no stranger to the RTS genre, but Square Enix has previously specialized in Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Explaining the move, Square Enix said in a statement that it 'has previously worked exclusively with Japanese development companies, so the decision to form strategic partnerships with developers located outside of Japan serves as a new cornerstone of its strategy to create games targeted primarily at consumers in Europe and North America. Additionally, Square Enix Group's foray into the real-time strategy genre is a significant expansion of its product lineup.'"

Today film studio Red Eagle Entertainment announced plans to establish Red Eagle Games, a studio that will produce games based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The games will be developed alongside movie adaptations of the series, which Red Eagle announced a few months ago. They'll be working with Universal on the films. "[Red Eagle producer Rick] Selvage said in an interview that the game company will make a series of games that will be co-launched with the movies. In addition, Red Eagle Games will make a massively multiplayer online game based on the Wheel of Time universe." Wheel of Time fan site 'Dragonmount' recently spoke with Selvage about the movie plans.

unc0nn3ct3d writes "In a shocking update on the seemingly endless troubles plaguing NCSoft, Richard Garriott — the king of online games, creator of The Ultima Series (and consequentially Ultima Online), as well as the recently troubled Tabula Rasa — has announced that he would be stepping down from his position at NCSoft. Apparently motivated by his recent trip into space, perhaps he has found a higher purpose while orbiting so high above the earth."

Destructoid has a neat post about a gamer whose condition prevents him from using a standard video game controller. With the help of a company called GimpGear, which markets devices for people with limited mobility, he designed and built a custom input device that makes use of fingers, toes, and even sips or puffs of air to control his favorite games. Pictures and a video of the setup are both available in the post.

The much-anticipated first person non-shooter Mirror's Edge is being released today for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Reviews for the game, while not without complaints, are generally positive. 1Up praises the controls, saying, "It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. ... Once you're familiar with Faith's abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it's easy to see potential routes through the world." Ars Technica is more critical, noting that the main story's gameplay only clocks in at about six hours, and that the artistic style doesn't vary much between levels. Nick Channon, a producer for Mirror's Edge, sat down with Gamasutra and discussed the reasoning for some of their design choices. The PC version of Mirror's Edge and some additional downloadable content will be available in January.

Ars Technica reports that the PC Gaming Alliance has declared themselves the "guardians of PC gaming," which includes finding ways to help gamers decide on gaming hardware, and to make progress on the issues of piracy and DRM. "[PCGA President Randy Stude said,] 'The PCGA will take up the challenge of piracy, not to assume the responsibility that the ESA has taken on... rather the PCGA would like to address the methodology that publishers might be able to take to solve, or to do a better job trying to solve, the piracy challenge for their substantial investments in content.' The PCGA won't give a standard approach to publishers, saying it is much more likely it will release a series of recommendations to publishers, and track piracy on an annual basis to see if the problem is growing or shrinking. The PCGA is also working on methods for members to track how effective their antipiracy measures are once a game has been released."

Epic Games president Michael Capps did an interview recently with GamesIndustry, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of downloadable content, and how it will affect the retail games market. He also discussed the trend toward social gaming, and Epic's plans in that regard. Quoting: "I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by ... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code. I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used — way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."

Activision's Noah Heller sat down with Gamasutra to discuss the refinements made in Call of Duty: World at War to keep the popular FPS franchise moving forward. He points to cosmetic things, like realistic burning and the ability to set just about everything in the environment on fire, as well as bigger gameplay improvements, such as making the AI more difficult to beat without having it "cheat." "... the main thing we tried to do is honestly make the placement just more brutal. You've always got an advantage on the enemy; you've been through the level before, you know where they're going to be, but in Veteran mode you're going to find that they're not going to cheat. You're really going to have to be going for headshots using the most effective weaponry. You're going to have to use that bolt-action rifle and aim for the head if you want to take an enemy out at a distance. It's a different sort of gameplay. We heard those concerns and we tried to address them."

jandersen writes "While I generally don't play computer games, I do occasionally play games like Crossfire or The Mana World, because they have more of a story line and allow you to go at your own pace. What I don't care much about, though, is that they are still focused on killing monsters and amassing wealth, and it gets very tedious after a while. Are there really no games where the goal isn't so much about increasing your own power and defeating others, but where you instead grow by doing things that benefit others, where enemies shouldn't be killed out of hand, but befriended; where learning, teaching, research and social skills are more important than killing and conquering? Would people be interested in a game of that nature?"

In September, we discussed a class-action suit filed against Electronic Arts over the DRM in Spore. Now, two new class-action suits have been filed that target the SecuROM software included in a free trial of the Spore Creature Creator (PDF) and in The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (PDF). If this sort of legal reprisal continues to catch on, EA could be seeing quite a few class-action suits in the future. One of the suits accuses: "The inclusion of undisclosed, secretly installed DRM protection measures with a program that was freely distributed constitutes a major violation of computer owners' absolute right to control what does and what does not get loaded onto their computers, and how their computers shall be used ... [SecuROM] cannot be completely uninstalled. Once installed it becomes a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio ... EA's EULA for Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition makes utterly no mention of any Technical Protection Measures, DRM technology, or SecuROM whatsoever."

Kotaku took a look at the "Challenge Room" downloadable content for the PS3 version of BioShock. They came to the conclusion that while the combat is entertaining, it doesn't have the same focus on the story that made BioShock such a good game. Quoting: "What's really bothering me is the lack of fiction. I'm not asking for a new ending or a tacked-on chapter that somehow changes the fantastic story of BioShock — why fix something that isn't broken, right? It's just that what made BioShock special was the story. Oh, sure, the graphics were spiffy, the art style was cool and the game really does play well (not too glitchy or difficult to manage). But to me, BioShock without its story is like a Twinkie without its filling — still somewhat tasty, but hollow and far less satisfying."

Eurogamer reports on the EVE Online Fanfest, at which developer CCP revealed details on the game's next expansion, due out in March. It will be the biggest expansion yet for EVE, and it will "introduce 'Tech 3' modular ship designs, branching epic mission arcs, further improvements to the new player experience, and exploration of uncharted space through unstable wormholes. ... The focus of the expansion will be 'true exploration,' with players using new skills and modules to travel through wormholes into all-new, unconnected space." CCP also hinted that further graphical upgrades would be coming, and a standalone first-person shooter based on EVE may be in development for a console release.

Massively points out an article about new research projects for the US Army. One of the projects will evidently involve testing their AI capabilities in popular MMOs, including World of Warcraft and EVE Online. "They're working on creating 'photorealistic looking and acting human beings' that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. 'I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they're responding,' Parmentola said. To test out the computer generated humans' 'humanity,' Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called 'massively multi-player online games' such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online — games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days. 'We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they're good enough to convince humans that they're actually human,' he said."

Variety reported last week that Atari secured the rights to a Ghostbusters video game from Activision Blizzard, intending to publish something next year to coincide with the first movie's 25th anniversary. "The Ghostbusters game, which features all four actors from the original movie and a new script by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, is a follow-up to Ghostbusters II." Now, Eurogamer confirms that the game is indeed in development for the PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 and DS.

With modern console technology making it easy to develop and distribute small games, more and more companies are taking advantage of gamers' nostalgia to re-release decades-old hits, and to create entirely new titles in older styles. Gamasutra takes a look at what the retro game fad has become, and where it can go from here. What old games or series do you think would translate well onto today's consoles? "Many gamers who bought Mega Man 9 did so because of the game's inherent nostalgia, or because they never had a chance to enjoy the older games on the Nintendo Entertainment System when they were younger. Mega Man 9 is very much a product of its context. Its gameplay is fantastic, but it too is a product of the time period in which it reigned supreme. It suggests the question: can neo-retro games stand the test of time? Will games that mimic or lampoon the 8-bit era remain relevant and interesting to the masses long after its original audience has disappeared?"

Turbine, the game studio that developed Lord of the Rings Online, said they are working on MMO products for consoles, for which they plan to provide details early next year. Kotaku notes that Turbine is also looking at incorporating user-generated content in future games. Quoting: "Turbine has the license to make MMOs based on the Tolkien universe until 2012, with options to extend until 2017. ... Turbine has its eye on open worlds and user-generated content, too: 'We're working on tech to let people... enable self evolving worlds,' [Turbine's communications director Adam Mersky] said. 'The idea is, we have these immersive, beautiful 3D worlds and they're designed by professional artists — but how can we let people create content in those... without "suburban sprawl," allow them to create gameplay environments.'"

Guitar Hero: World Tour's recent launch saw boxes of plastic instruments flying off store shelves, quickly selling out in many areas. Unfortunately, many players reported problems with the bundled drums sets, prompting Activision to release a drum "tuning" application and a free midi-USB cable to connect the instruments to a PC. Otherwise, reviews for the game have been largely positive, and MTV's Multiplayer Blog did an analysis of using Rock Band drums in GH:WT, and vice-versa. Kotaku looked at which set was louder, coming to the conclusion that while they sound different, decibel levels are very similar. The early success in sales for GH:WT caused Activision to say holiday demand may not be met, and that they're examining two methods in particular to develop the franchise: instrument upgrades (hopefully less ludicrous than Logitech's $250 axe) and the possibility of a subscription-based model for user-generated content. "[Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby] Kotick says that there are now 25,000 user generated tunes that have been created for the game, and projected 'up to 100,000 songs' by the end of this year."

rbgrn writes "If you're interested in developing a game for the Android platform, there is a lot you need to know. If you have previous experience with game development, moving over to the Android platform won't be all that difficult. You will mostly just need to learn the architecture and API. If you're new to game development, here is a list of must-knows for getting started in Android game development. This is a good starting point for developers seeking to write any type of mobile game."

Gamasutra is running a piece by game designer Brice Morrison questioning the lack of games for grown-ups — or, more accurately, the lack of an intellectual progression in games like that which exists for books, movies, and other creative works. "While my interests in other media grew substantially more adult — from Nickelodeon to CNN, from Dr. Seuss to George Orwell — games did not seem to have a more intelligent counterpart for me to move on to. As I entered college, I became less interested in mindless entertainment and more interested in encountering new ideas. I didn't want to kill time; I wanted to take advantage of it. I wanted to challenge myself with profound concepts, to learn of new paradigms, processes, and possibilities. ... So what exactly are the barriers of entry for great thinkers (or groups of thinkers) to leave their mark on games? What must happen for games — or interactive entertainment, if you will, to mature as a medium?"